One of the most common pieces of feedback we hear from women navigating egg freezing is simple and consistent: “I didn’t realize there would be so many additional fees.”
Even when clinics are acting appropriately and transparently from a billing perspective, patients can experience cost surprises as confusion or distrust.
What Clinics Know and Patients Do Not
If you work in a fertility clinic, it is understood that certain services are billed separately. Anesthesia is a common example. It is often provided by an outside group and invoiced independently from the clinic.
For patients, however, this distinction is not intuitive. From their perspective, the egg freezing experience feels seamless. Receiving a separate bill later can feel unexpected, even when it was technically disclosed.
This disconnect is not about intent. It is about perspective.
Add-On Costs Can Undermine Confidence
When patients encounter costs they did not fully anticipate, it can create doubt at a sensitive moment in their journey. Even small or standard fees can feel significant when they were not clearly understood upfront.
Over time, this erodes trust and contributes to the sentiment many women express.
“I thought I understood the cost, but then there was more.”
Through Freeze.health, where more than 150,000 women have compared egg freezing options over the past nine years, we consistently see that clarity around total expected cost is one of the strongest drivers of patient confidence.
Include All Expected Costs in the Cycle Price
A best practice we recommend is listing all anticipated cycle-related costs together, even if certain components are billed by a separate entity.
For example, medication and anesthesia are among the most common cycle-related expenses not paid directly to the clinic. Most egg freezing patients understand that medication costs vary based on dosing, insurance coverage, and other factors. Anesthesia, however, is often less clearly defined and one of the most common costs egg freezing patients have voiced frustration over. Including anesthesia in the estimated cycle cost, with a clear note if it may be billed separately, helps patients better understand the full financial scope of the procedure.
To patients, what matters most is knowing what to expect, not how billing is structured internally.
A Better Experience Today Supports Care Tomorrow
Fertility clinics are rightly focused on creating a positive patient experience. For egg freezing patients, that experience often determines where they return to use their frozen eggs if and when they are ready to pursue IVF in the future.
Clear, inclusive pricing helps ensure:
Patients feel informed rather than surprised
Trust is built early in the relationship
Women are more confident in their decision-making
When fertility clinics proactively communicate all cycle-related costs, they set the stage for a positive, informed experience.
Sidonia Buchtova PA-C, C-RHI is a co-founder of Freeze Health and a Physician Assistant specializing in women’s health and reproductive psychiatry. Her own personal experience of comparing egg freezing clinics led her and her co-founder to create and launch Freeze Health - a free resource that has helped 150,000+ women decide if, when and where to freeze their eggs.
